ISI Brotherhood Podcast

150. Do You Even Deserve Free Time?.

• Aaron Walker

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We’re spotlighting a conversation from last year that speaks directly to driven leaders who rarely slow down.

When was the last time you stepped away from work without feeling like you were falling behind? For many high-achieving Christian entrepreneurs, downtime can feel undeserved—almost irresponsible. This episode challenges that mindset head-on.

Rather than treating rest as something to be earned after exhaustion sets in, the discussion reframes it as a God-designed pattern woven into the fabric of a healthy life. Success isn’t sustained by constant acceleration. It’s sustained by intentional cadence. Many business owners operate at full throttle for years, confusing activity with effectiveness, only to discover the cost later.

Through decades of entrepreneurial experience, we reflect honestly on the emotional emptiness that can follow major financial wins—and the relationships that sometimes absorb the hidden price of relentless ambition. You’ll hear why a once-a-year getaway cannot repair chronic depletion, and why consistent practices of renewal are far more powerful than occasional escapes.

Looking at the life of Jesus, the conversation uncovers a radically different model of leadership—one marked by purposeful availability, clear boundaries, and deliberate withdrawal for renewal. Practical tools are offered to help you evaluate your life across key areas and identify where fatigue may be quietly eroding your impact.

At its core, this episode reminds us that stepping back is not laziness—it’s trust. Trust that God remains in control when we pause. Trust that our worth is not measured by output. Trust that sustainable leadership requires restoration.

If you’ve been running hard and wondering why peace feels distant, this conversation offers a healthier path forward.

Key Takeaways:

  • Who’s in control of your schedule—you or the clock?
  • Why renewal is a design principle, not a bonus for hard work
  • What we can learn from Jesus about boundaries and leadership
  • Why annual vacations can’t compensate for daily depletion
  • How prioritizing restoration strengthens your business and your life

Connect:

SPEAKER_02

God really didn't design us to run on fumes. I mean, he didn't. And a lot of us are redlining it today. We're running on fumes. We're really not getting all accomplished that we could. And I want you to know that rest is not a reward for hard work, but it's a rhythm of trust and of stewardship. And I want you to ask yourself right now, where you're sitting right now, are you managing your time or is your time managing you?

SPEAKER_00

So today we're wrestling with this idea of do we even deserve free time? And if so, how much? As Christian business owners, we grind, we we we give, we lead, we serve. But what about taking time off? What about rest? What about margin? These are things that we wrestle with. We wrestle with understanding what is appropriate, uh, when it should happen, what quantity. And today we're going to be diving in, try to tap into a little wisdom, a little experience, a little scripture, and wrestle with this question. So, Big A, welcome to your podcast.

Guilt Of Rest After Success

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, hey Seth. You know, it's funny, the preacher used to say that your sins meet you at the pulpit stairs. And this topic is really something for me that I struggle with big time. Uh, I've been working now for 50 years every day. And now I'm backing up. I'm taking a little time off. And I feel guilty sometimes. It's like, man, I don't even deserve this. Like, I should just keep pushing forward. Physically, I'm in great shape. Hopefully, mentally, I'm in great shape. That's debatable. But I feel like maybe I should just continue forging on, working hard, pressing. But then my wife goes, hey, take a little time off. Let's enjoy what you've worked for this whole time. And it gets into this: do you deserve it? Do you not? Do you keep going forward? How much free time do you need? You know, and this is, yeah. So I'm going to be teaching out of uh really diving into this for myself for sure as well as teaching.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. You know, as an entrepreneur, I remember writing in uh in my book that we have these muscles that we train like every day, right? And then particularly like when something happens, like you sell a business or maybe you take a vacation, it's awkward for a while. It's it's like I've been used to doing this and and and this intensity. And frankly, I think a lot of us have an adrenaline addiction. And so when we go into these moments of rest, because they're either imposed on us or something great happens, uh we don't know how to handle it. We're just not equipped for it. It's not normal, right?

SPEAKER_02

You know, the first business I sold, I was 27 years old, and I thought I was gonna take an extended period of time off. And a buddy of mine owns a house down in Naples, Florida, and he said, Hey, just go down there and spend the summer and you and Robin really enjoy it. Y'all hang out. I had two small children at the time. And I get down there and I'm like, hey, I've had this big, you know, capital event in my life, and I'm gonna take some time off. I'm gonna rest, I'm gonna enjoy the summer, we're gonna hang out on the beach. And in three weeks, I was back home. Yeah. Yeah. And I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I said, I don't feel like I'm deserving of this. And I had it had been instilled in me my whole career to work, you know, grind it out, work, work, work. And then I had an opportunity. And so I think though that there's a misconception of the word deserve.

unknown

Yeah.

Sabbath As Command And Trust

SPEAKER_02

And when we often think about it, we tie our worth to our output. And that's what I was doing. I was sitting down there on the beach in Naples thinking I could be doing more in this. What are people going to think of me? You know, I'm a sloth, I'm lazy, I've got a little money, I'm gonna just take it easy. And so I believe in myself that I should be here back working again. And so I felt like I had earned an opportunity, but I really couldn't rest. And scripture really gives us a different model of this. He says that God said that the design for us includes a Sabbath rest. It's not earned, but it's commanded.

Looking At How Jesus Spent Time

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. You know, um, to this point around uh rest, um, and and the Sabbath, as I've been listening to a uh a believer who is also Jewish, and he he frames the whole story in Genesis around God calling people to trust and rest and the human tendency to say, no, I'm gonna figure this out on my own. Like he he really zeroes in. So this is this is like a DNA level question for us. Like, are we holding the world together, right? Or is somebody else holding the world together? Which kind of, and then for people, uh, and we're gonna we're gonna really dive into this because I've I've been actually on a deep dive around time management and productivity and what that means for me. But what's cool is I found a resource that's scripture based that I love. And the fact the guy that wrote this book said he read 40 time management books.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

Rest Fuels Higher Performance

SPEAKER_00

And he said the one thing I noticed is all of them said, Oh, you gotta do it exactly like this, right? But none of them actually looked at how Jesus spent his time. And he's like, Why wouldn't we go to the author of time, right? When we look at these things. And so, but we framed it as the the the question today was, how much time do you deserve? And maybe that was, you know, that was a good hook, right? People are like, wow, this is an interesting question. But do we actually need rest? Do we do we need it to be higher performers? Some people still don't even believe they need rest.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think we definitely need rest. Two years ago, I hit the wall pretty bad and I took a two-month sabbatical uh to get some rest, and I came back much more productive, much more clear, uh, had a plan, had a strategy, uh, wasn't fatigued. So I think we certainly need rest. But I want to go back just for a second when you were talking about like what is it, what does the model really look like? How how do we get there? Like, uh I'm very motivated, you know, high D personality, uh, work and work and work. I've been instilled by my dad and my mom to work. And, you know, like how how do you know when you've gotten to a place where you can rest? We're so driven, we're so motivated. Does that matter? Does the outcome matter? Well, or should it be just the rhythm of life?

SPEAKER_00

I think it has to be rhythm of life, big A. And and the reason is is people tell themselves, I think, I think there's a lot of analogies to finance, right? So money, time, right? There, there's a lot of parallels. People will say, I'm just gonna work really hard and then I'm gonna retire. And they get to retirement and they're like, okay, now I'm completely disconnected from purpose. I spent all of these years grinding, maybe, maybe sacrificing my health.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And then I get to this magic age, and everybody tells me, I mean, frankly, the financial marketing apparatus tells us all that the goal we're all working towards is this retirement where it's total leisure. And we've sacrificed.

SPEAKER_02

It's not what it's cracked up to be. I'm at that age, right? And I can attest it's not what it's cracked up to be.

Boundaries Against Always-On Culture

SPEAKER_00

And so we've sacrificed our health to get to this magic moment, and then we get there, and this is time and time again, when we take our eye off scripture, this is what the world actually delivers us. It delivers us something that doesn't give us the emotional payout we were expecting. No, like you promised me when I got to retirement, and if I did all the things just right, it was gonna feel like this. And son of a gun, it absolutely doesn't. And so when it comes to time management, what I'm learning is uh, and time off is you have to bake that time off into your daily and weekly routines. Like it literally has to be on your calendar. You have to force yourself to rest. Otherwise, you develop such bad habits. By the time you get an extended vacation or whatever, it it doesn't help. It doesn't even scratch the itch because you've lost the ability to actually rest.

SPEAKER_02

You know, it's in our culture though.

SPEAKER_00

It is.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's it's like, hey, you got to always be on. I've got a brother that's a real estate agent, and finally he made some real hard decisions, you know, because other people think that because he's a realtor, he should be available 24-7 to show property. And he's really devised now kind of a schedule with boundaries. And he said, listen, I've got a life to live as well.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Eight, nine o'clock at night, I'm not gonna be talking to you about your house. And on Sunday morning, I'm not gonna be showing you a piece of real estate. Uh, but our culture says that we really should always be owned. We should always be available, we should always be present. But our families are over here, and we were spending this relationship capital to grow our businesses professionally and financially, and we're spending this inordinate amount of relationship capital to accomplish it. And then we get a little success financially, and we look back and we don't even know our family. And those are the things that we're trying to protect against.

Retirement Myths And Daily Rhythms

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and uh a lot of it is this fear of missing out, this fear of hustle. I was talking to somebody just this week. I just got back into town from a trip for a couple days. And um, you know, I was talking to this older gentleman. I'm like, are you gonna he asked us if we were gonna go out to dinner? And I knew he'd been on the road. I'm like, you should just go home and and and have dinner with your wife. And it reminded me of a Korean CEO that I talked to one time who told me that he rarely ate dinner at home with his family, even though he had a young daughter. And it was because he was out with the business guys literally every night, and that that was actually expected in their Korean uh elite business culture. It's just the way they roll. And and I and then later, a little, I mean, it surprised me when I heard that. And then a couple, you know, whatever, a year later, I was driving with him and I said, Why is that? And he goes, 'Cause we feel as if we step back, the world's gonna go on without us and we're gonna be forgotten. And so it was this idea that if I tap the brakes, if I rest a little bit, I'm gonna lose my stature, I'm gonna lose my whatever we're we're hanging on to, right? Income, uh, importance, you know, influence, whatever it is, right? And that's a that gets back to that trust issue that you brought up earlier, big A.

SPEAKER_02

You said something that I want to go back on just a little bit, is that it doesn't give you the feeling like you thought it was going to, this age of retirement, this emotional feeling that you're gonna expect. I talked to a mutual friend of mine and yours, and he was 26, 27 years old, and his wife texted him a picture of their bank account, and uh she goes, This is your goal. You've been shooting for this, you have a million dollars in cash in the bank. And he said it was almost deflating. Yeah. He said he thought he was gonna have this elation. He was gonna be so excited and he was gonna be able to share with his friends. And he said it was almost this letdown, this disappointment, this feeling of it didn't do for me what I thought it was gonna do for me. And I remember feeling that when I was 27, selling out to a Fortune 500, is that on the anticipation of it, and even prior to the closing, I thought, man, you know, I've taken something when I was 19, turned it into a sale to a Fortune 500 at 27. And I remember distinctly the night or the afternoon that we closed, I went home and there I felt a little bit hollow. And Robin goes, You're not all excited like I thought you would be. And I said, it it doesn't make me feel like I thought it was going to make me feel. And that's what this is that the culture is teaching us now. It's a lie, right? To be on, to be always going. And so what I have found, you know, conversely, is that the more I put boundaries around the time, it's more of an influence on people that I coach and mentor. And it also is better for my family. And that feeling is rewarding.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That feeling I get from my my children, my grandchildren, and my wife is like, I'm glad you're present when you're present.

Deep Work Versus Shallow Busyness

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, because it's aligned with your true goals. And so the book that I want to uh just kind of highlight, it should be a paid commercial because I'm that high on it, is a book by a guy named Jordan Rayner. And the book is called Redeeming Your Time. And it's been the best book I've I've ever read around something I struggle with, which is kind of time, time management. Because by nature, I'm curious about a lot of things. You know, I'm relatively responsible, and people ask me for stuff and I want to say yes. And he ties it back to okay, we should be grace-filled and productive. He goes, so much of the productivity hype in our culture is around this idea that we got to work harder and that we've got to compete. We've got to eat what we kill. You know, if it is to be, it's up to me. Like that's the ethos of people. And then they're always selling you the right widget that you need to buy from them to help you, you know, achieve this elite status. And he, and his attitude, and and really ties for me to gratitude is no, we work hard as a response to what God's already done for us. We live in grace. Christ has paid the debt, he's redeemed us, he's called us to himself, he's prepared somewhere for the future for us. And I like to say, we're playing with house money and we're living on borrowed time, right? Borrowed time, house money. That should give us a freedom, right? And from that place of freedom, now we got to start saying, I don't rest when I'm dead. The whole sleep when you're dead mantra is no, I actually need some rest in my day. And maybe rest looks a little different. We can talk about that. Not everybody rests the same way. Uh, one of the things that uh Jordan talks about in his book, he's like, if you work with your mind, he goes, often rest is resting with your hands, doing something creative with your hands, yard work, you know. If you rest, if you work with your hands, you know, maybe it's sitting down reading a book, right? But but we need to be replenished as we go, not just wait six months and you know, hope we survive till then.

SPEAKER_02

What do you tell younger entrepreneurs, small business owners today? Would you say, Seth Buckley, even in your business, that time off can increase productivity and not decrease it? And how would you give a testament to that and what you've seen in your personal life?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, time off does uh you have to let your brain kind of detox. You have to let it, and it takes a while. Usually it's a couple days as you go into a vacation, and then a couple days before you get off the vacation, your brain starts to feel that anxiety of like, oh my gosh, I got to get back on that horse. Do I even have a big thing?

SPEAKER_02

Robin always tells me that she's gonna send me on vacation three days before the family arrives. Yeah, exactly. So I have time to detox.

Identity, Margin, And Living Within Means

SPEAKER_00

So it certainly, it certainly helps, but but the bigger thing that I am concluding is we get so busy with minutiae that we actually don't get to do the deep work. I actually think deep work is satisfying to us. I think part of this issue that we're talking about rest is actually tied to I feel anxious because my life is so busy, yet I'm not actually getting the most important things done. That to me is the problem we're trying to solve. It's like, why do I need rest? It's not often just because I'm burnt out and tired physically, it's generally because my brain is like cooked. Because I've just been trying to slog through 10 million things all at one time. And what I'm learning and and what I appreciate about this book is it's teaches you how to capture all those issues, put them somewhere, you write them down, you know they're gonna be taken care of, and then and then kind of reverse engineer it. Building, I mean, Dan Miller was a tremendous friend of yours. He was a mentor to me from a distance, got to meet him a few times. And he really highlighted that certain days of the week he was doing deep work. And I think part of what why we don't feel rested is we're buried in shallow work because we never organize ourselves enough to do some deep work.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's so good. I remember going over to Dan's oftentime on the weekends, and he'd be sitting on the front porch of the sanctuary uh that he built off to the side of his house. And I'd be like, Dan, how's it going today? He goes, I'm doing some really deep work. And I'm like, it looks like to me, you're just sitting here. He goes, That's really deep work. Yeah. And giving my mind an opportunity to rest and to reflect. And, you know, here's the thing though, that most of us tie our identity to our output. Yeah. We we really value what's on the profit and loss statement. I want to, this could be an episode within itself, but one of the things that we've got to pay attention to is how we can develop margin in our life so that we can do deep work.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

Delegation, Systems, And Time Freedom

SPEAKER_02

And we stress ourselves, you know, we buy things we can't afford, we leverage ourselves to a point that we feel like that we have to work 24-7, seven days a week. And we don't have to do that. But so I'd just say be mindful of how you're spending your current resources, not to allow yourself to a position where you don't have runway or you don't have margin so that you can sit and do deep work.

SPEAKER_00

And nobody's gonna do that for us. I mean, that's the other revelation here. There is no intervention coming. Nobody else gives a rat's tail about this. If you don't take ownership of it, nobody's gonna do it for you. And and what they're gonna do is they're gonna keep asking you for stuff. And there's not, they're not being bad. They're just they're just stating their needs. I think part of our issue as as leaders is we're we're not coming to grips with our own human needs and with our mandate from scripture. Like we are tasked with being good stewards, but we're not great stewards of our time many times, at least I haven't been. And even saying I'm available, you know, I'm with this kind of this humility thing. Well, I'm available, I'll take any call, right? And then we're like, yeah, but am I accountable to actually achieving the goals that I set? Because I, you know, especially relative to family and others and business, if I'm so busy, you know, just doing the productive work, but I'm not getting the higher order goals, you know, are we really making progress?

Sharpening The Saw And Health

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, and then someone's gonna suffer. Some of the commitments prior that you've made promises, they're gonna suffer as a result of that. You know, in ISI, we teach a lot about systems and team building. And that's really the secret to earning time freedom, is having other people that you can delegate things to. You can have systems and processes. Scott Beebe owns My Business on Purpose. He's a master at developing, creating systems and processes to help us allow ourselves to have more time freedom. And so really think through what you're doing. Is it the redundancies that's keeping you from accomplishing your goals and being able to rest? And if so, you need to get some coaching or mentoring or help around creating your systems and really going through team building exercises in order to allow you to have more time freedom.

Rediscovering Sabbath And Relational Gold

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And and also your health, you know, as we talk about these traps, right? This, this, these traps that entrepreneurs can get into is, you know, we fear that if we if we if we rest a little bit, you know, we're not gonna, we're not gonna keep winning, you know, we're gonna lose our place. I think it was um seven habits that talked about you got to sharpen the saw, you got to take time to sharpen the saw, right? And and for us, that's many times it's just exercise, right? Nobody's gonna drag us out of bed and to the gym, and everybody's gonna want time from us. But if we're not in physical shape, if we're not um You can't perform. No. There's no way, not for very long.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, you can't. You need to really schedule your free time, I think, with the same discipline as you schedule your meetings. Seth, are you really good at taking a day a week, complete sabbatical or complete sabbath, we'll call it today? And I'll be first to admit, I'm not great at it. I'm getting better. And there was a time uh where I worked every day, but I'd go to church and I'd come home and we'd eat with the family, but I was always make time to do some kind of work. Even as I've gotten a little bit older, I see the value of completely uh separating myself from doing tasks that I normally do. Now, like you said, I go out in the yard and do some things I enjoy helping Robin with the flowers and the shrubbery and just working out in the yard, doing things like that. I don't consider that work. I'm talking about my normal task. How good are you at doing that?

Relationships Over Entertainment

SPEAKER_00

Uh I'm a D. I'm I'm I'm bad. I'm bad at it. In fact, one of the regrets I have, if if I were to do it over again, and I will, I will be teaching this to my kids, and I feel bad about it because I feel like I missed the window. Now, I'm sure that's probably just another lie I'm believing, but I would have implemented a Sabbath, you know. Um I'm Jewish by blood. I'm a Christian by, you know, God's design, right? You know, I'm I'm I'm Christian. But um, and so I probably resisted a little bit of that Sabbath thinking because it felt like it was a regulation maybe being put on me. And then also because I'm I'm a pretty driven personality and I like activity, right? But the thing that I think people miss about why a Sabbath is so important and why I wish I would have implemented it is the relational gold that comes. You know, in this book from Jordan, he talks about one of the things he's done with his kids is, you know, Friday afternoon, phone goes on silent. It my phone takes the the day off, right? It's it's about games, it's about these other things. Sunday morning he gets up, gives his kids a coffee. I thought that was hilarious, takes them to a donuts, right? And and they play games as a family, and they go to church and whatnot. And it's the relational capital that is replenishing to the soul. It's not so much that I'm just refraining from work. It's no, no, no, no. I'm actually making this about celebrating God's goodness and doing something tangible that isn't about me needing rest, it's about me acknowledging God commands me to rest. As an act of faith to remind optional to remind myself and to remind others, I'm living in God's world. He's meeting my needs. And I'm going to celebrate him and I'm going to rest. And so I don't know how to do this with my kids and grandkids at this stage, but frankly, I missed this boat. I just missed it and I didn't, I didn't do it. And I wish I would have.

SPEAKER_02

Well, that's one of the reasons that you and I host this podcast is to teach those that are behind us. Don't make some of the mistakes that we made be better. And we're telling now from experience that we know there's a better way. So learn on our dime, those that are listening, and don't do some of the things that we've done wrong. Try to implement that in your family, and the dividends will be huge. You know, the last thing I wanted to talk about a little bit was time as an investment in what or who, and that matters most. Our number one core value here is relationships matter most. And the best use of our time or our free time that we have, it's not playing Nintendo or, you know, Netflix or it's not those things to escape. It's really investing in people and purpose. And these are the things that I did recognize about 25 years ago. Those that have been following me for any period of time, know I had a horrific automobile accident where the life of a pedestrian was lost. And I really flipped the switch and really became self-aware of the people and the brevity of life and how fast life can change. And so for me, I do know the investment in the people is more important than the time in the business. So for you, Seth, you've not had that type of travesty in your life, but realizing it as an older man, small business owner, uh, what would you tell people in how to invest their time and the reason it's important to invest it more in people and purpose rather than your free time just going out doing whatever you want to do?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question. Uh for me, um, I think what makes, you know, figuring out what makes your soul come alive, right? Um, I think it genuinely does have to be kingdom aligned or it's gonna ring hollow, right? Which is why you bring up people. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

Should it be others focused more than inward focus?

SPEAKER_00

I think there's I think there's got to be a balance. I mean, yes and no. Some of both. Look, yeah, I mean, Jesus is back to the Jesus as a perfect example. Um He didn't allow every interruption. Some people have said Jesus is always available, and many times they're like, hey, Jesus, come with me and go over to this place. And he's like, No, I'm teaching my disciples right now.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

Being Fully Present And Single-Tasking

SPEAKER_00

And so I think it's both. And there's other things.

SPEAKER_02

And he rested. He rested, right? He was in the boat on the other side. There was people over there that were starving and dying. And he's like, I gotta take a nap here for a minute on the front of the boat. Right exactly.

SPEAKER_00

And so I think no, we we we need rest, personally rest. And we need to do things that actually give us energy and life, and that's gonna be unique for each person. Um, and then there's also the, but we have to acknowledge if it turns selfish, in the same way that our productivity can turn selfish, our rest can turn selfish. By definition, we're selfish human beings. But one of the things I love, this principle is Jesus also accepted his uni presence. Like God is omnipresent, Jesus being part of the Godhead, was omnipresent. But when he came to earth, he says, I'm gonna be in one place at one time. I've been really bad at this, and I'm I'm I'm making good progress on saying, no, I'm gonna focus on the person and the task at hand one at a time. A lot of times that's my phone and my task list that's got half of my mind while I'm having a conversation with people and getting better at saying, when I am doing something that's not work, can I just actually do it? Just be there. Just like slow it down, be fully present, talk to somebody, you know, and then and then stacking. I mean, you know this. Uh, people hate this about today's world. They uh I was I was with a guy at a board meeting this week and he said, you know, I used to work for myself for 20 years. He goes, now I work for a larger company and my calendar is open. So what happens with an open calendar? People book meetings back to back to back, and you end up chain smoking your freaking meetings for eight hours and you're and you're just spent. And so the point of that is um guarding our time so that we can be fully present and you know, do the things that we're doing with some intention.

SPEAKER_02

You know, I remember for 20 years when I was building my businesses early on in my career, I'd sit down on the couch and I'd go to sleep in 30 minutes after working all day. And then Robin has said to me countless times during that period of time, all I get is your leftovers.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

Don’t Give Family Your Leftovers

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And it made me feel terrible, quite honestly. It didn't make me feel terrible enough at the time to do anything about it. But looking back now, I really cheated her for a period of time. And after the accident, I started doing some things with my kids and with Robin to show them that they were the most important. Like I would even go get my kids out of school and they're like, What's wrong? Nothing's wrong. I'm getting you out of school. We're going to eat ice cream, we're going to the park. And they're like, Dad, what in the world? And I'm like, no, you're more important. Well, don't you have meetings today? Yeah, I do. But you know what? I canceled them. And I want to encourage some of you listeners today to think through that for yourself. It's like, how could I demonstrate to my spouse or to my children or to my grandchildren that they're important? And I think that's canceling something that maybe you've got to do that you'll get to later. Oftentimes we hurt the people that are closest to us the most because we think we can get away with it. So I just want to encourage you, don't give them your leftovers. And the margin principle says without space, you can't hear God's voice or see other people clearly.

Margin Enables Strategic Insight

SPEAKER_00

Well, and and strategically, this is one thing that's really hitting me lately. If you have a big idea and you have something really important, the idea that you're going to get that insight through a drive-by experience is it's a myth. You learn that insight by studying a problem. It's been said that an expert is somebody who's made all of the mistakes in a very narrow field of practice, right? I also heard from somebody talking about product market fit. They they said basically uh you will um you'll know uh that to find product market fit, you have to what's have what's called a learned secret. And and meaning you've paid the dues to actually learn something. And so this is an argument for this deep work that we were talking about is you have to give yourself enough space, enough margin, enough sitting on the porch like Dan Miller at the sanctuary to say, it may not look like I'm working, but I'm actually letting my brain kind of process through things and ask myself good questions so I can come to a conclusion that's very strategic. Uh, it's one of the reasons why many of us don't get where we want to go is we're not slowing down enough to be truly strategic and think something all the way through. It's just the pace is too fast for us right now.

SPEAKER_02

Well, we live reactive and not proactive. Yes, sir. We're not intentionally following our vision plan or our vision story. And so we get sidetracked. So you the audience is listening right now, there's like, well, okay, how do how do I know how much time to take off? There's there's a few things that you can do that I think will really help you. And uh first is audit your life. We use it called pillars: personal, professional, relational, spiritual, and financial. Those are the five pillars in ISI that we look at all the time. You need to audit those things and say, how is it that I'm falling short personally or professionally or spiritually? It's hard to keep all the balls in the air at the same time, but you've got to do an audit in order to find out where you're at or take note of your current position and be honest with yourself. I tell people all the time, what is it you know that you're lying to yourself about? Yeah. Just really be honest and sit down and take an audit of your life. And then you got to think which pillar is it that's getting neglected? And I think if you do that, that's really a clue to you because your time should reflect your values.

Audit Your Pillars And Align Calendar

SPEAKER_00

Right. They say you're your your checkbook and your calendar reflect what we really believe.

SPEAKER_01

That's true.

SPEAKER_00

You know, and here's a here's a perfect example. Uh uh my associate pastor preached a message this weekend. I was listening to it while I was traveling, and it was about prayer. And he said, prayer is is actually the reflection of your maturity of a Christian life. And then the guy had a second quote, I think it was Martin Lowe joins. He said, and everything else in the Christian life is easier than prayer.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And what was interesting, and I and I want to tie that back to rest because it comes from the same root, because we would rather work hard and grind it out than we would admit that we have a we have we are children of God in his kingdom and we need his help. And I think our issue with rest isn't how much we think we need. I think we're a crappy judge of how much rest we need. I think the issue is really how dependent are we, how trusting are we, right? And that's our issue with why we struggle with rest. And and I would argue, ask your wife if you're married, how much rest she thinks you need. And I would I would start there. I would literally start there. I think we're a terrible judge of how much rest we actually need.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, because we let our ambitious, big, hairy, audacious goals get in the way. Yeah, we do. And we want to be accomplishing something at every minute. I think the next thing that you've got to do is ask yourself, is my schedule aligned with who I say I want to become?

SPEAKER_00

And and if it's not, who's in charge of your schedule? I mean, I know a lot of our listeners are self-employed.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And Trevor Mock, one of my closest friends, his question he's been asking lately is, what did you hire your business to do? And I've had to wrestle with that for the last year because if my life sucks and if I'm stressed out, I get nobody to blame, particularly if I work for myself. And I'll just let that one sit.

Define Winning Rest With Your Inner Circle

SPEAKER_02

Wow, so true. You know, really, we've talked about it earlier, but you've got to use a rhythm, not a balance mentality, because you won't get a perfect balance every week. I don't care what you do. You've got to look for these healthy rhythms, whether it's a weekly Sabbath, whether it's a quarterly getaway, or you've got to have some margin daily in your life. You've got to have some means to measure this by. So look for a rhythm and not a balance.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And but you also have to define what winning looks like, right?

SPEAKER_02

Because Yeah, well, in the beginning, you have to identify that, or otherwise we'll never know when we've accomplished it or when we've won, right?

SPEAKER_00

Specifically relative to rest. Like what does good rest look like? Because I don't even think we know, right?

SPEAKER_02

You know, you said it earlier, and I think this is really important. You said ask your wife, but we say involve your inner circle.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Like ask the people that you're around, whether it be your children, your spouse, your accountability partners, your mastermind group, who are those people that can help you figure out uh what do I need to do in order to get this rest that I'm needing? And I even ask people, do I seem present to you? And sometimes Robin will say, No, you don't. Like I can tell, you know, but we've been married 45 years now. She knows when I'm not present, she's like, Where are you at? And I just start laughing. And she goes, because you're not sure here on the couch with me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm like, yeah, I know I've got this thing going on, or I've got this deal I'm trying to close, or I've got, you know, whatever. And she's like, why don't you set that aside and deal with that in the morning and right now be present with me?

Non‑Negotiables, Phones, And Daily Surrender

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, for sure. And to kind of wrap that up, you know, we got to set these non-negotiables. I actually think our phone is a huge issue for us. What are the that's a question? What is the non-negotiable for you about phone? Recently I took uh X. I don't spend any time on X. I was loving it. You know, Jordan Rayner in his book, he said one of the things he does, he doesn't read any news any longer. He just says, I'm done. He goes, It's not my issue. I can't fix it. Eventually, if it's important enough, somebody will bring it to my attention. Like, what are the things that we can cut out of our lives? Well, that's good that might actually make us more restful, right? And then, and then have some discipline to say, no, this is non-negotiable. I am gonna read the word and work out during this time, right? I am gonna put my phone on silent at 5 p.m. Because I think what we'll find is if we build that into our lives, as you were saying earlier, big A, we'll quit believing that myth that either A, I deserve this time off, or B, when I get that week off in Hawaii in the fall, all of a sudden my life will be back to feeling, you know, balanced. I just don't believe that. I think we got to pull it into every day and got to start to surrender a little bit on this topic.

Rest As Stewardship And Faith

SPEAKER_02

Man, you are so right. And uh when I start thinking about summarizing this, God really didn't design us to run on fumes. I mean, he didn't. And a lot of us are redlining it today. We're running on fumes. We're really not getting all accomplished that we could. And I want you to know that rest is not a reward for hard work, but it's a rhythm of trust and of stewardship. And I want you to ask yourself right now, where you're sitting right now, are you managing your time or is your time managing you? You know, if we're honest with ourselves, most of us wear busyness like a badge. But the truth is it takes real men that have exercised their faith more than hustle ever will accomplish in your life. So we've got to exercise that faith in our life. And God modeled the Sabbath, not because he needed it, but because we need it. Your free time isn't something you earn when you finally finish the to-do list. It's something that you steward because you trust that your life, your business, and your family are safest when they're in God's hands and not yours. Hey, thanks for being with us today. I enjoyed being with you. Seth, thanks for hanging out with me today, and we'll see you next week on the ISI Brotherhood podcast.